Horus

map05 Back to the hub, but the first signs of decay are setting in. A crack has opened up to the left just past the entrance, leading to a blue armor. The enemies are also tougher, with chaingunners and hell knights added to the mix. The former actually killed me on my first attempt, thanks to being a bit careless. Once cleared, the teleport this time leads you to the Storage Facility.

map04 I didn’t use Devalaous’ patch, but I wish I did in retrospect (if you haven’t played it yet, use it!). My solution to the silence was just to close and reopen DSDA lol. Anyway, I remember this map being a massive pain on pistol-start, frequently running out of ammo and constantly dying in the second half. On continuous it’s still tight on ammo but not nearly as crazy, it’s actually reasonable for the most part, with the obvious exception of the cyberdemon guarding the lift as Celestin pointed out. It’s almost as if the blursphere placement was designed for the ZDoom blursphere behaviour (where an idle enemy isn’t alerted with it) but by then the cyber is awake anyway. The first half of the map is hitscanner paradise (or hell :P) and was completely trivialised thanks to the megasphere I carried over from the last map. Had I not found it, it would probably have been a right PITA, even more so than on pistol start. Once you leave the comfort of the green techbase however and descend into the lower tunnels, the gameplay turns into a series of tight corridors and small rooms, with minimal ammo and not a whole lot of health either. I can safely say my experience with enhanced with carryovers on this one. I did think the ending was cool with the massive hell noble cloning facility that you have to destroy

map03 After the short intermission map we reach the Genome Labs, starting with what is actually a very impressive rain effect. It doesn’t take long for a sense of decay to step in, with cracks forming and contrasting with the otherwise clean techbase look, and the canyon separating the two halves of the base. This level starts off the trend of being tight with ammo – at first it’s really not a problem, but then you get into the dark maze full of pinkies, which is an absolute ammo sink. It wasn’t too dark with my settings, but I can see how it could be worse with other settings / source ports. But in any case, it still wasn’t particularly fun. This map also shares Biowar’s love of egregiously long lifts. There was also one section towards the start where infinite height was a real pain. However, the rest of the map was fine. I like how the canyon breaks up the techbase, and I thought the path to the megasphere secret was neat (I didn’t get it on my first playthrough).

Equinox Equinox is a mapset that I first played a lot more recently than Biowar, so I am expecting my memory of each level to be a lot more complete, rather than the patchy memories I had for Biowar. I foolishly first played it on pistol start, and remember struggling through it due to it being extremely tough on ammo. So now I will be playing it on continuous, to see if carrying forward supplies will make my second playthrough smoother. map01 BPRD seemingly decided not to name any of the maps, so map01 it is. It’s only been two years after Biowar but visually it looks generations ahead, at least from the opening vista, with far more elaborate geometry than in any Biowar map. That said, the music was also much louder too, and I had to turn it down a notch just for it to drown everything else out. Before you enter the space station though, one can descend stairs to the sea and what is presumably Doomguy’s boat. There’s also footprints…which I didn’t think to follow and trigger the secrets there…oh well. The station itself is bright with the classic silver/blue coat, albeit with more elaborate texturing than your typical techbase. The combat itself is a very simple affair of minor hitscanners and imps with the pistol/shotgun, which is not very engaging – the only thing that kept me interested was the secrets and Doomcute PCs. In exploring however I triggered the same softlock that Devalaous did. Not my favourite opener, but I am already liking the amount of ammo that I have leftover from this map – because I’ll need it! map02 The second map takes us to the first of four very short intermission / hub maps (also on maps 5, 8 and 11). This one is especially short because it contains only hitscanners and imps. There is a ‘secret’ but it’s basically hidden in plain sight. These hub maps do help to break up the lengthier and more demanding maps, but the first one comes too early to really see any benefit of that because of how early on it is, and the preceding map is neither long nor difficult.

Final Thoughts As more of more of the older mapsets get played and the sheer amount of new content that gets released gets more and more awe-inspiring, so this club pivots more and more towards new mapsets, as you can see by the club’s history over the past few years. But this club still has many pre-2010s mapset left to play, and I have to say I do enjoy going back to simpler, easier old mapsets from time to time. With a couple of exceptions, this mapset presented practically zero challenge and combat decidedly played a second fiddle to atmosphere and environmental storytelling, enhanced by the custom textures and ambient sound replacements. It was for the most part relaxing and not at all stressful to play through, a nice mapset to unwind to. Whilst there’s very little that makes Biowar stand out, I still definitely enjoyed my time playing it, and during a time where I was (before starting this mapset) starting to wonder if I was getting a bit bored of playing Doom again too. The maps also very much trend on the short side, which in some cases can lead to not a whole lot to talk about, although I usually managed to find enough! I’m also not complaining about that anyway to be honest – things have been pretty busy for me so far this month and if the mapset was chunky I probably would have dropped out already. Finally, a general comment, with so much new content out there, I very very rarely replay mapsets, but it’s really worth taking the time out to do so and see how it fares on repeat playthrough.

MAP17 - “Sacrilege” by Chris Harbin And so now we come to the penultimate map, which is where my last playthrough came to an end, so this map is half-blind (although my memory is actually quite spotty for a lot of maps since I last played it 4 years ago). It’s a more ambitious map than its predecessor, with more thought put into its combat and structure, with significantly more straightforward progression too. We start on a central hub with a cyber for company, one we don’t really start with the resources to kill. Instead, one has to go to both the offshoots to gradually stock up your armoury with some moderately challenging fights in the interim, following which the cyber is trivial to deal with, especially if you find the secret BFG. The other major boss monster, the spider mastermind, then makes an appearance, and as usual you have to play the peekaboo and game and fire shots whilst spending as little time in her firing line as possible. Again this is made somewhat easier and less painful if you have the BFG. Some simple platforming brings to a conclusion of a map that overall played decently well but doesn't exactly stand out. MAP18 - “Die Heuschrecke” by Chris Harbin Low monster count with all the weapons provided to you straight away can only mean one thing – Icon of Sin map. I might give 90s mappers a tiniest bit more of a free pass than modern day mappers for using the IoS, but the concept still sucks either way. The lead-up to the IoS arena is boring filler, especially the peekaboo sections of the archviles and revenants on pillars. The actual IoS fight itself is actually mercifully painless, consisting of just a simple switch sequence to unlock the lift through the IoS’s mouth and a final archvile duo before a clean shot to victory. So I’ve seen far worse IoS maps, and for once an IoS map isn’t my least favourite map of a megawad that it’s included in, but it’s still very unremarkable.

MAP16 - “The Killing Fields” by Chris Harbin This map has many of the hallmarks of a 90s map: long corridors and mazes, obtuse progression that had me going back and forth many times (especially towards the end after the blue key door with a switch that took me ages to work out what it did), inconsequential combat (save for quite a neat trap at the start), meme fights (namely the barrel chain reaction, which admittedly raised a smile), monotextural rooms, and so on. Not a sound basis for great map design, and yet…I really enjoyed it. I think I must have been in one of those moods were just about any competent map would satisfy me (and despite all of the above, it is competent). I played quite a bit faster than I normally would, which I think also increased my enjoyment somewhat.

@KickAss There was no thread last month as nothing got enough votes for a thread to be made

Cat 1 Dead on E4M4 Dead at 69:30 185/332 kills 0horus_ironman_2024_06.zip

Cat 1 UV Died on Map 01 with 14/113 kills at about 2:45 0horus_ironeagle_2024_06.zip

Interesting how we are all wired differently as Doom players, for me seeing the two blue torches either side of the wall like that led me instantly to try it. I did something similar for a secret in one of my own maps once, albeit there I had the extra telegraphing of it leading to an outdoor area you could see from elsewhere in the map. And @RHhe82 yes if you go straight on it just skips to map 16. Also personally I’m not necessarily against people voting for their own work as long as they follow through and actively contribute to the thread by regularly posting developer’s commentary. That kind of insight doesn’t happen too often in the DWMC, but it’s always a very interesting read (Eviternity 2 being the most recent example).

MAP15 - “Heat” by Chris Harbin Visually cohesive this is! We are in a hellish cavern filled to the brim with lava. Whilst I wouldn’t call this hard, it still continues the more challenging trend seen since map 13. It’s also unusually scarce with ammo for most of its duration, and I had ration my ammo to avoid falling short. The combat didn’t strike me as anything particularly special, and yet I quite enjoyed this map. Perhaps it was down to actually having to think about my weapon use for once. I also found it quite amusing that you can cheese the red key trap by just staying by the red key as the lost souls can’t hit you. Although I’m not sure why mind you as the lines aren’t marked as monster blocking. I get the feeling that Chris wanted most players to find the secret exit because it wasn’t particularly well hidden :P although in fairness it’s hard to hide too well in a map with as short a scale as this one. Not complaining to be honest as a lot of secret exits in wads (at least in more modern ones) are pretty cryptic, it’s nice to have an easy one for a change. MAP31 - “Juggelo Funhouse” by Chris Harbin An Insane Clown Posse tribute to the tune of a MIDIfied version of Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy, we have another hub + 3 map of sorts, except one you have to do in a specific order. The central hub plus each of its 3 offshoots present a different combat scenario. The central hub is pretty much ‘try to survive the hitscan’, whilst the blue key fight is actually quite a neat fade in-out light battle where you have to try and work out where the monsters are in between the bouts of light. This map will likely be an unpleasant experience for any player insistent on killing what they see as soon as they see it, but when four barons were released with only an SSG, I got the hint and anti-grind mode kicked in. I ended up preserving all of them, plus the spider mastermind and the cyber until the BFG was accessible right at the very end of the map, which made maxing the map a much more fun experience. Ultimately, a very simple map, but one that raised a smile.

MAP14 - “Absolution” by Chris Harbin We start in the final part of the techbase, staring at a portal to hell. From then on, Biowar finally makes the switch to hell (wouldn’t surprise me if we see another techbase yet given how this set yo-yos between themes but there you go). The difficulty finally ramps up with it too, and whilst this doesn’t pack as much content as the last map, it retains its bite. Much to my chagrin, I had quite a bit of trouble with the first part of this map, dying a few times, whereas I didn’t recall any such trouble the last time I played it, but that’s probably pistol start vs continuous for you. Most of the struggle comes from a low amount of health, paired with hitscanners and projectile monsters in close quarters where it can be a bit trickier to dodge the projectiles. The combat was a little grindy at first before I found the rocket launcher. Even with the rocket launcher though, sadly I found I didn’t enjoy this map that much until I found my crutch, the SSG. I feel that says more about me than the map xD What I do remember is struggling with the progression last time, and momentarily I struggled yet again. But I wondered why because it seems rather straightforward – I was so caught up catching those secret teleporters that I forgot to take the actual main teleporter at the end that leads to the yellow key. Combat aside, whilst we are clearly in hell, we seem to have yet another map with an identity crisis, happily mixing cavernous areas, marble, wood, vines, bricks, metal, and yes, a scattering of techbase textures too. Visually cohesive this is not.

MAP13 - “UAC Prison” by John Bishop Well well well what’s this, a 364 monster map in Biowar!? This was what I needed after the last map, and whilst I didn’t know it at the time of playing, having checked afterwards I’m not surprised that this John Bishop’s second map in the wad. Despite this however, it shows visual continuity as the start of this map matches with the end of the last map, which is pretty unusual considering in most of the maps the ending has nothing to do the start of the next map. Aside from that, this does have a lot of parallels with John’s last map, Last Call. There are a lot of thin hallways and corridors, although this time rather than opening up bit by bit, they are separated by height differences or keyed doors. Additionally, this map makes very heavy use of teleporting monsters to repopulate formerly explored areas. Carelessness is also punished, as a found out to my detriment, as I died in the main prison area about half a dozen times, mainly thanks to not being cautious enough with the prevalence of hitscan in this map. Ultimately, whilst the hitscan-use may be a bit egregious, I found it an engaging map to play with a catchy midi to boot, and it was refreshing to have a combat-focused map in this set for a change. John Bishop has both of my favourite maps in this set so far.

MAP12 - “Military Center” by Chris Harbin After a whistlestop tour of wooded and icy environments we are back in the familiar territory of the techbase. Unfortunately, it’s an unpleasant return because of its pairing of near perfect symmetry and absence of combat challenge. In fact we not only have geometric and visual symmetry, but worse still we have combat symmetry as well, leading to a map that plays very predictably. I am fine with a map being easy if it has something else to offer in its place, such as the environmental storytelling present in most of the preceding maps. But this map has nothing else to offer. The one thing that did catch my interest is how Chris got the keys to appear in the central hub, for which I checked UDB to see they are each buried in a sunken sector which is raised when the relevant trigger is activated. A pretty simple trick in retrospect, but one I hadn’t considered at the time. Ultimately, while (used in moderation) symmetry certainly has its place, for me this is a perfect example why perfect symmetry is not good map design.